Donut Run Down
by albinofrog88
Summary: In an AU, Logan gets his dearest wish: Veronica waits till the next day to get her purse back at the Echolls mansion and therefore never catches him kissing Yolanda. Will he and Lilly still be together when everything falls apart? Or will it make a diff
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I wrote this around the same time as "Summer on Mars". I found this again, and I want to write it now, but I'm _really_ not brave enough to post it over at veronicamarsfic on LJ, so I'm posting it here instead, basically sums this up. Please review! I'm an even bigger coward without reviews (seriously, my antisocial tendencies are boderline mildly autistic). Also, 'Rams' is mentioned by Dick in 'Normal Is The Watchword' as being the fourth person helping them burn Pan's football field (or burn down a pool, as it actually turns out). He is never mentioned again.

**Donut Run Down (A.K.A. Logan's fantasy AU)**

She's at home eating dinner when he calls. Head bowed down, trying not to notice her father glaring at her mother, she's only too happy for the reprieve. Telling her father the reason, she picks up her phone and leaves the table, finger only clicking the 'talk' button when she's safely in her room.

"Hello?"

"Veronica?" _Oh crap_, she immediately thinks. _Logan sounds like he's drunk and pressed the wrong number again. He probably meant to call Dick's imaginary friend Rams to cheer him up with a boatload of strippers, but ended up clicking on 'Ronnie' instead._ She can't help it; she snaps. He'd been mean to her all week about the Yolanda thing.

"What the hell do you want?"

"Veronica!!" he practically screams now, and her blood runs cold at the knowledge he doesn't even sound _half_ drunk anymore. He just sounds like he'd been crying. A lot. But that can't be right. Even after all the shit he'd been through with Lily, and all the missing clothing and weeks of wearing t-shirts by the pool she was almost _certain_ his father was responsible for, she'd never seen him cry.

"Yeah?" she asks, trying not too sound too concerned about the jackass who more likely than not he was the one responsible for the "snitch" spray painted across her locker in bright red ink Friday morning.

"What's up?"

He takes a deep breath before answering. Before diving.

"Could you please pass the phone onto your- onto Sheriff Mars, please?"

* * *

Her father's eyes refuse to meets hers from behind the steering wheel. When he asks her- for the forth time- what exactly Logan and her had talked about before she handed over the phone, she had huffed indignantly and told him 'the abortion of their lovechild.' 

Then she had paused and feigning secretiveness had said, "Logan was just calling to confirm his presence at the clinic as my hand-holder hadn't been found out by the press." Keith scowled. _So she could piss off her father, as much as he'd pissed off her!_

"Blood tests had proven it'd been a Kane after all."

She doesn't notice the way her father's face whitens at the joke.

He drives to the Kane's in near-complete silence. He keeps glancing over at her half worriedly, half suspiciously, and it's making her paranoid, but he wouldn't answer her questions before leaving the house, so she doesn't bother asking them now. All he had said before calling the station was that it might be nothing, but that it might be something, and that he needed to check up on it. He leaves the phrase _and I don't trust to leave you with your mother_ unspoken, but she picks up on it anyway. Why else would he take her along?

And if he's so scared to leave her alone with her mother, what does that mean? Is he worried her mother'll bolt or pass out before the stint of motherly obligation is over, or is it something more? Is there a reason he's so afraid to leave her alone with her mother while she's tipsy?

Like maybe she'll be needing a _real_ parent soon?

They pull up at the house, and to her surprise there's already a few police cars there. Her father tells her to stay in the car no matter what, and she nods her head agreeably, but she doesn't really mean it. She's too busy worrying.

Logan stands off to the side crying. Logan Echolls. Sobbing.

Logan Fucking Echolls is sobbing like his whole world is over while managing to stand up straight enough to actually appear quite sober while doing it.

_Now I've seen everything_ she thinks, before walking over.

* * *

_He never told her what he meant by love. It had always meant affection with necessary fidelity in her world. _

The moment she stepped in his house she knew something was off with him. When a sleep-tousled Yolanda stepped out in his clothes, he had told her he loved Lily, and she'd believed him.

She'd just believed in the wrong definition of love.

* * *

"Can I ask what's happened?" she said beside him with eyes widened in a way he knew meant she really didn't want to know, but knew she had to. She'd settled beside him without a word, a whimper or a whisper unlike all their other other meetings that month. She was acting nonchalantly, but he could see the way her back was rigid beneath her hoodie, and knew she was gearing up for the worst. 

He knew so fucking much about Veronica Mars he could write one godawful book.

He thought about waiting until she snapped, or at least until she walked away disappointed by his silences. He thought about kissing her and delaying the invitable. Instead he just continued the progress of the tear tracks by stamping out his cigarette and letting gravity push him down. Down upon the grass with all the insects of the ground, life didn't seem as long somehow. He didn't want to live so very long right now. Not when there was no innocence left in the world to lose.

"Duncan's dead. Lily still won't talk to me, but I'm pretty sure it's my fault."

She lets gravity push her down too.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Flashbacks are in itallics. Also, its come to my attention there's another story where Duncan dies going on over at veronicamarsfic now by a much better author...I seriously doubt there are any other similarities, but if there are it's pure coincidence because I haven't read any of it, and there's no reason any credible writer have to copy me. So read on! And please review! I feel a little like I should be throwing in my hat, but if you feel like that, please don't tell me! Just don't review! My overall week has sucked, and the lovely reviews of last week certainly cheered me up.

Disclaimer: I am sorry to disillusion anyone who assumed the lack of a disclaimer in the 1st chapter meant I owned this show. I am also sorry to have to tell all 0 of you, there is no Santa Clause. I own nothing! Please don't sue!

_The next day, everything seemed normal. Veronica felt no need to tell Lilly that Yolanda had apparently passed out drunk, and Logan had leant her some of his clothes to wear when she woke up during the night. She loved her best-friend, but she could overreact sometimes, and Veronica knew Logan would never cheat on Lilly, or lie to **her**. So the day started off relatively bland. Lilly made a spectacle of making out with Logan in the hallways and got taken to the principle's office. Duncan held her hand and walked her to all of her classes. Logan generally acted like a smartass, Lilly acted like his Queen. _

In retrospect, it was also the day Lilly started her affair with Eli, so maybe the day's not so normal or so bland after all. But it's not like she knew that then.

A week later is the day she remembers as the day her world turned upside down. It's the day she caught Yolanda's friends discussing her apparent pregnancy scare in the girl's bathroom.

It's the day she heard Logan was almost a father.

* * *

Besides a quick "what do you mean-" which was quickly followed by sereral loud swallows and a slightly panicked look on her usually composed Mars face, Veronica has mostly been silent during the the past three minutes following his confession, and in the small part of Logan's brain that hasn't yet realized his life as he has ever known it is over, Logan is starting to freak out. If there has been one constant in his life, it's Veronica's ability to put things in perspective for him. Whether she means to or not.

Take, for example, the fact that she has always been the poorest 09er in their crowd. Or the only one with a betting chance of making it to the pearly gates when she dies. Or more recently, the most hot-headed and bitter 09er.

No matter the case, Veronica has always been someone he can rely on to make him feel better about the world. Either by being worse off than him financially and socially, or by being better off family and personality-wise, she generally makes him feel happy. Which is a pretty crappy thing to say about himself, come to think of it...feeling good he's got more money and better diggs than a friend of his. But then he never said he was a good guy like-

well let's just say a good guy.

Except when he turns his head to offer emotinal support, or a shoulder to cry on, or just some selling point to make her stop being so goddamned eerily quiet (_like a doll,_ he thinks. _Or a dead guy._), she isn't there. At all.

And then that tiny seedling of ratinal alarm over a friend's repression of emotions turns into all out irrational panic over a friend's disapearence following another friend's _death_, because oh my god, WHAT IF SHE DIES TOO????

And while it isn't logical (he has eyes- he's entirly aware the place is crawling with policemen including her own overprotective sherriff father) he can't ignore that panic swelling in his chest.

* * *

_Veronica cornered Logan outside school while he was rushing to his car. _

He looked like a caged animal.

"Logan," she growled. "Why is Yolanda's period late?"

Logan blinked. He looked taken aback and really, really pale suddenly.

"Don't fucking joke about that Veronica."

Seeing the look of fear on his face, Veronica felt a shiver of satisfaction race up her spine. "Who's joking?" she said and then started walking away.

"Veronica wait!" he yelled, but she didn't listen. She was too busy walking towards Lilly.

The next morning though, he was the one to corner her this time around.

"You fucking bitch!" He screamed loud eough for all the kids nearby waiting for the school bell to signal the beginning of their day, to hear. "You knew she had taken a pregnancy test! You knew it had come back negative, and you knew she'd taken a morning after pill!"

Actually she hadn't known the details, but she didn't bother to deny any of it. Afterall, she was no expert, but wasn't one week a little early to try a pregnancy test?

"You lied to me about not having cheated! I can't believe you'd do something like that Logan, but at least you should have had the balls to own up to it!"

"I did own up to it! By not denying it, I did!"

"You told me you loved her! You told me-"

Logan laughed, but it didn't sound humorous.

"And you thought that meant I hadn't cheated??? People cheat on the ones they love all the time, when they weren't as rip roaringly drunk as I'd been, and when they don't have girlfriends who lie and make up stories so they don't have to see their boyfriends! How can you be so fucking naive?"

The bell rang and Logan stormed off.

* * *

Veronica saw Lilly rocking back and forth and felt tears prick her eyes. She had blood all over her.

"Lil?"

She was mumbling something. Veronica was sure of it. Leaning closer Veronica figured out what it was.

"I told him something bad would happen if he talked to me. I told him something bad would happen if he talked to me. I told him something bad would happen to me if he talked to me..." over and over and over again.

Veronica felt a shiver go up her spine. Lilly was looking where she and Logan had just been. And Logan wasn't there anymore.


End file.
